On Wednesday, March 13, 2019, the Ukrainian Election Task Force, in partnership with the Victor Pinchuk Foundation and the Transatlantic Commission on Election Integrity, held a panel discussion in Brussels on foreign interference efforts in Ukraine’s upcoming presidential election. Former Secretary General of NATO Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Founder & Chairman of Alliance of Democracies...

Five years ago in Kyiv, roughly 100 protestors, dubbed the “Heavenly Hundred,” made the ultimate sacrifice when they were gunned down while demonstrating against the corrupt, authoritarian government of Viktor Yanukovych. Soon after, Yanukovych fled to Russia, and Russian forces invaded and illegally annexed Crimea and then turned their sights to The Donbas. Nearly...

As Ukraine prepares for its March 31, 2019, election—and gears up to defend that poll from cyberattacks—Kyiv should coordinate its defenses with other countries also preparing for elections of their own. The Republic of Lithuania, the southernmost Baltic country, will hold its own presidential election on May 12, just six weeks after Ukrainians head...

Western attention and support for Ukraine’s cyber defenses from the United States and NATO seem to be an important focus currently. This support is especially relevant and necessary during this pivotal presidential election cycle. On January 23, 2019, the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the World Economic...

As Ukraine approaches its presidential election slated for March 31, 2019, the issue of how to respond to cyberattacks continues to plague governments around the world. Potential strategies range from proactive deterrence to reactive prosecution and potential retaliation. We know that hackers targeted the last Ukrainian presidential election in 2014. Therefore, we must prepare...

Tomorrow, February 8, is the deadline for prospective candidates to file for the March 31 presidential election in Ukraine. So far, some three dozen applications have been approved by the Central Election Commission (CEC). As election day nears, Ukrainian officials and outside observers are sounding more warnings about Kremlin-driven attempts to interfere in the...

The head of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine (FISU), Yegor Bozhok, discussed Russia’s plans for Ukraine in 2019 in his interview with Ukrinform. According to Bozhok, Russian secret services and military forces are determined “to resolve the Ukrainian problem” in 2019. The precise meanings are open for interpretation, but ostensibly “resolve” means to...

This week in the Ukrainian press, Volodymyr P. Horbulin, former secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, took the stage to discuss his view of Russia’s role in the 2019 Ukrainian presidential elections. In the article “Play Without Deception” in Mirror Weekly, Horbulin analyzes Russia’s deep concern over the Ukrainian election results....

Whenever voters participate in national elections, as Ukrainians will do on March 31, 2019, they often have an eye on both the future and the past. Thus, memories of the Soviet Union, as well as of tsarist Russia, may play a surprisingly important role in determining the outcome of the March 31 vote. Every...

This survey was conducted by the Razumkov Centre’s Sociological Service in cooperation with the Democratic Initiatives Foundation from December 19-25, 2018. The sample consists of 2,017 respondents aged 18 and over, in all regions of Ukraine except Crimea and occupied areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. The sampling error does not exceed 2.3...